研究所、轉學考(插大)、學士後-英文題庫下載題庫

       Few areas of science are as littered with intellectual rubbish as the study of innate mental differences between the sexes. In the 119th century, biologists held that a woman's brain was too small for intellect but large enough for household chores. When the tiny-brain theory bit the dust (elephants, after all, have bigger brains than men), scientists began a long, fruitless attempt to locate the biological basis of male superity in various brain lobes and chromosomes. By the 1960s sociotiologists were asserting thatural selection, operating throughout the long human prehistory of hunting and gattenng, had predisposed males leadership and exploration and females to crouching around the campfire with the kids.

       Recent studies suggest that there may be some real differences after all. And why not? We have different homes and body parts; it would be odd our brains were a hundred percent unisex. The question, as ever, What do these diferences angur for ourur social roles?--meaning, in particular the division of power and opportunity between the sexes.

       Don't look to the Flintstones for an answer. Hower human beings whiled away their first 100,000 or so years of existence, few lof us today make a living by tracking down mammoths or digging up tasty roots. In fact, much our genetic legacy of sex differences has already been rendered moot by that uniquely human invention: technology. Military prowess no longer depends on superior musculature or those bursts of aggressive fury that prime the body for combat at ax range. As for exploration, women--with their lower body weight and oxygen consumption---may be the more "natural" astronauts.

       But suppose that the femmists' wonst-case scemario tums out to be true, and that males realy are better, on at at certain mathematical tasks. If this tempts you to shunt the grls all back to Home Ec--the only acceptable realm for would-be female scientists eighty years ago–you probly need remedial work on the statics of of "averages" yourself as some wome taller

and stronger than some men, some are swifter at solid geometry and abstract algebra. Many of the pioneers in the field of X-ray crystaliography-which involves three-dimensional visualization and heavy doses of math--were female, including biogysicist Rosalyn Franklin, whose work was indispensable to the discovery of the double-helical structure of DNA.

Then there is the problem that haunts all studies of sex sex differences: the possibility that the observed diferences arer r really the result of ingering culral factors–pushing females, for example, to "succed by dummying up. Girls' ademic achievement, for example, usually takes a nosedive at puberty. Unless nature has selected for smart girls and dumb women, something is going very wrong at about the middle-school level. Part of the problem may be that males, having been the dominani sex for a few millennia, still tend to prefer females who make them feel stronger and smarter. Any girl who is bright enough to solve a quadratic equation is also smart enough to bat her eyelashes and pretend she can't.

       Teachers too may play a lager role than nature in difiating the sexes. Studies show that they to favor boys by calling lon them more often, making eye contact with them more frenty, and pushing them harder to perform. Myra and Savid Sadke professors of education at American University, have found that girls do better when teachers are sensized to gender hias and rnin from sexist language such as the use of "man" to mean all of us. Single-sex classes in math and science boost female erformance, presumably by eliminating favoritism and male disapproval of female achievement.

       The success, so far, of such simple educational reforms only underscores the basic social issue: given there may be real innate mental differences between the sexes, what are going to do about them? A female advantage in reading emotions could bebb e interpreted to mean that males should be barred from psychiatry–or that they need more coaching. A male advantage in math could

be used to contine girls to essays and sonnets–or the decision could be made to compensate by putting more effort into girls' math education. In effect, we ady compensensate for bovs' apparent handicap in verbal skills by making reading centemiece of grade-school education.

       We are cultural animals, and these are cultural decions of the kind that our genes can't make for us. In the whole discussion of imate sex diferences is itself heavily shaped by cultural factors. Why, for example, is study of innate diferencasis such a sexy, well-funded togic right now, which happens to time of organized feminist challenge the ancient sexual of power? Why do the media tend to get excited when scientists find an area of difference, and ignore the many reputable studies that come up with no differences at all?

Whatever science eventualy defines it as, la difference can be amplitied or minized by by human culturangements: the choice is up to us, not our genes.